Kalopsia
by Cassinea
Summary: He is too pale and full of sharp edges to be conventionally attractive, for which you are grateful. He is already in your workplace and your thoughts; there's no more room for him under your skin. (Draco/Hermione)


Disclaimer: This is a transformative commentary on Harry Potter, which is the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit or copyright infringement is intended.

Written for Otter & Ferret Gift Exchange 2014 Prompt: _"Someone who's willing to burn the world down to protect the one person they care about, that's a man I understand."_

-The Blacklist, "Frederick Barnes"

* * *

**Kalopsia** (_noun_): The delusion of things being more beautiful than they are.

* * *

**Her Story**

He is too pale and full of sharp edges to be conventionally attractive, for which you are grateful. He is already in your workplace and your thoughts; there's no more room for him under your skin.

Every morning, as you follow the curve of the hallway from the lifts and approach the paint-peeled door of your office (the Ministry values house-elf affairs _so_), you pause and brace yourself before gripping the doorknob. His languid, lanky presence infects your mind's eye. Even behind closed lids, you see him seated insolently on the chair that never stops creaking, his long legs sprawled over the desk, a dog-eared novel propped open on his palms. He won't acknowledge you; he never does, which is just as well. Because if he did, he might notice the uneven staccato in your chest that peppers your cheeks warm, might even scrape out your secret from the broken light-bulb recesses of your mind.

Your predicament reminds you of a conversation the two of you once had. The silence in the dingy office, save for creaks and turning pages, was driving you mad. Who knew that someone, who you properly loathed even, could become the bane of your existence simply by ignoring you? It wasn't that you craved insults or screaming matches, because you aren't an insane person—but to be so insignificant an existence that someone you pitied and disliked could cheerfully ignore you into sullenness is the most degraded he has ever made you feel, and from half a lifetime of put-downs and petty hatreds, that's no small feat.

"Morning, Malfoy," you start saying every day, savoring the slight twitch under his left eye at the intrusion of, god forbid, good manners. He ignores you, naturally, but that's all right. You've violated the unspoken contract between you, and now all bets are off.

One morning, you glimpse the cover of the book he's reading and startled, nearly elbow your cup of tea onto the floor. He's reading 'Anna Karenina.' _Tolstoy_'s Anna Karenina. "Tolstoy is a Muggle," you decide to helpfully point out.

"That explains the shit writing," said Malfoy, flipping another page.

The legs of your chair scraping backwards, you nearly topple over in your indignation. "He is _brilliant_ and if you knew the first thing about literature, you'd know that—"

"That he's a brilliant cure for insomnia," he said, finally tilting his impossibly high cheek-boned face to look at you.

"Only for people with no appreciation for art!"

"Oh, yes, hundreds of pages on the virtues of farm life—high art, that."

"Not for the first time," you respond caustically, "you've managed to thoroughly miss the point."

Malfoy tosses the book on his desk, his chair whining in protest as he turns, his hands spread in mock repose. "All right, then, enlighten me."

You don't know if he's having a go at you or if he really cares what you think, but if there's a chance that he'll stop chilling the office air with his incessant brooding then you'll take it. "Well, it's a masterpiece on psychology, at least as they understood it back then. There isn't just _one_ point."

He crooks a pale brow. "Still waiting."

"Okay, take the pastoral farm scenes." Gesturing to his corner-bruised and much-abused book, you speak faster as you warm to the subject. "The pace is a deliberately slow contrast to the more emotional bits in the city, with Anna and her husband and her lover. Tolstoy was arguing that a life without all the trappings of artifice, particularly the drama it entails, was the best way to live. Hard work, family, companionship—that's essentially all you need to be happy."

"So if Anna was a farm girl she wouldn't have stepped into a train? Simplistic psychobabble rot."

"Except that's not his message at all! Look, Anna's sort of a cautionary tale about how perception is a choice. And that's the building block of almost everything we experience and feel."

"What?" said Malfoy, with a dry laugh. "No, it's not. You can't choose what you see and hear."

"Well, no, but perception's much bigger than that. It's like," you pause, remembering the passage where she sees her husband after a long separation, "that part where she gets off the train and meets her husband. She still loves him at that point but she's almost. . .looking for reasons to stop. . .now that Vronsky's in the picture. One of the first things she notices is that he's got weird ears. I mean, it's not like she's never seen them before, but suddenly, they bother her. Why?"

"I don't particularly care," he said, the corner of his mouth quirking, "but that's never stopped you before."

"It's because," you push on, too enthused to back down now, "she's subconsciously looking for a way to cut ties! So she starts picking him apart and finding his flaws little by little. What Tolstoy's saying is _that_ is a choice of perception. When you're in love, or in hate, or even indifferent, it's the result of you choosing, every single day, the bias in what you perceive."

"That's incredibly naïve, Granger. What—you think we're born in a vacuum? Not everything is a choice. We don't get to pick our childhoods or our families, and that background's always going to color how we see the world. There's no changing that, no matter how gung-ho or self-empowered you think you are."

"People only think that because it lets them off the hook! Oh, I can't help being this way," you trill, miming a breathless damsel, "or sorry, that's just how I am! No, take responsibility! Like, with Anna and Vronsky. Sure, maybe you can't always help how you feel, but you can help what you do about it. She's infatuated with Vronsky but that's inconvenient because society frowns upon infidelity. . .so what do you know, she's got to displace the blame somehow, right? Otherwise she'd be a bad person in her own eyes, and no one ever wants to believe that about themselves. So suddenly, her inner narrative's all about how her husband _drove_ her to it."

"So you don't believe events can ever spiral out of control? Once you choose, it'll always be your fault and you're damned forever, is that it?"

Sighing, you continue earnestly, "No, of course not. That's the beauty of choices. You can always make a different one. It's not easy. In fact, it probably gets harder the older you are, but it's no different than people who fall in love and then fall out of love, right? On some level, both of those were choices—maybe tiny, incremental choices, like when you love someone, you gloss over their flaws but when you get into a fight, suddenly, you can't see beyond them. It's not effortless like breathing. You've got to be aware you're doing it in the first place, and then you have to work at it. Pretty much all the time."

Malfoy rests his chin between his fingers, staring at you from an angle which makes you feel awkward. "And that's the big secret? You've decided that everyone's got a heart of gold squirreled away somewhere, and you'll be damned if you let it out of your sight?"

"Hardly," you reply, snorting. "Just because I believe in second chances doesn't mean everyone gets a free pass no matter what they do. I'm not a _saint_."

"No," he agrees, "merely insufferable and preachy."

"Well, if that's the label for wanting people to own up to their mistakes and maybe," you say, "maybe making the slightest effort to be different. . .then so be it. I'll wear the badge proudly."

"Are we still talking about a book, Granger?" he asks softly, stroking the cracked spine of his discarded novel.

This is how it starts, you think. One day, two people are coexisting in icy indifference, the next they're arguing over the finer points of Kafka's 'The Trial.' Then it occurs to you that it's a bit odd how Malfoy's always got his nose in one Muggle book or another, so you inquire as is your wont.

"Muggle Studies assigning Muggle books—what were they thinking?" he replies acerbically.

You vocalize the first thought in your mind. "But. . .you're not at Hogwarts."

"No, I'm in an office. With you. Shocking, I know. Did you get run over by a car on the way here?"

"I mean—I thought that was the point of your taking this assignment. So you wouldn't have to go to class."

"Just because I'm serving out probation here doesn't make me exempt from all the brainwashing."

"Brainwashing?" you repeat, shriller than you intended. "Learning about Muggles isn't _brainwashing_."

Malfoy makes an irritated noise in the back of his throat. "They're trying to condition us to feel warm and fuzzy feelings for Muggles. What else would you call it?"

"Then you still believe that we're subhuman," you force the words, "and even if we can do magic, we're still lesser than and all that hateful rubbish?"

"No, now you're putting words in my mouth."

"Only words you've put there in the past yourself!"

"See, this is why I didn't want to talk," he snaps, slapping his book shut in his lap. "I can't do anything without you flinging history in my face or puffing up with indignation at the slightest difference in opinion."

"This isn't a _slight_ difference in opinion, Malfoy! It's a—a colossal, insurmountable mountain! Either you still think I'm a Mudblood or you don't. It's that simple."

He narrows his grey eyes, the texture of unflinching steel, as he searches your face. For an insensible instant, you hear his deep voice ringing agreement in your ears, and you know with certainty that if he does, you are done with him, with whatever this all has been. But he surprises you, and maybe himself, a little too.

"No," he says at last. "I've seen you bleed."

Then he turns away, gripping the armrests of his creaky chair, white-knuckled and silent. But it's a different quality of silence, not a stillness fraught with disdain or silence hiking up the air pressure. It's a moment of soundless finality, as though he has been waiting and waiting, and dreading its inevitability, the unavoidable nature of your crossed paths, until he'd rather crash headlong into it if only it'd mean it was over.

"Okay," you say, with a nod, then return to the stack of complaint forms on your desk.

Sometimes, you watch him studiously ignoring you, while eating the ham-and-egg sandwich you pack diligently for lunch every day. Vaguely, you recall that this all resulted from some kind of unspoken truce forged that day the Ministry implemented an icebreaker exercise for their new employees.

"Paperwork? You're afraid of _paperwork_?" you ask, disbelieving.

"I would've put 'shrill, sanctimonious busybodies' only there wasn't enough room," he replies.

Your grip on the strip of paper tightens. "What are you doing at an orientation for new Ministry employees anyway, Malfoy?"

He glances down at your neat, schoolteacher handwriting. _Flying_, you wrote oh-so primly. "Do you ever listen to what you're saying, Granger, or are you so used to being ignored you've picked up the habit?"

"The Ministry cannot have so lost their minds as to hire you!" you persist.

"True enough. In fact, you've no one else but yourself to blame. Your reputation for rubbish lost causes is so tremendous it's apparently preceded you. Who _else_ were they going to condemn to your godforsaken Office for House-Elf Affairs?"

"Oh, please, a lost cause," you scoff. "Romanticize yourself much? You made crap choices, now you have to deal with the crap consequences just like everybody else."

"I was speaking of the house-elves, actually."

This is the first day of your new fantastic adult life, and you will not allow anyone to rain on your parade. "No," you say, shaking your head. "I'm going about this all wrong. This—it's karma. You and your family are notorious house-elf abusers. Now you have to deal with the fallout. My problems are now your problems. _Karma_."

Then you spin on your heel and return to Ron and Harry, your real friends, who are good and decent and don't smelt a bullet out of every word. Somehow they've gamed the system and partnered each other, which is so like them you're torn between rolling your eyes and jabbing a butterfly into their ribs. Theirs are twin faces of confusion followed by suspicion tossed in Malfoy's general direction, Harry's expression cautious but not overly so and Ron's a laser pointer of contempt. Well, you can't say you blame them, really.

Familiarity can make a fool out of anyone. One day in a nondescript week wedged between two equally bland months, you forget to put your guard up, and suddenly you're anticipating him—the amount of space he takes up in the office, the movements which spur each creak of his chair, the abominable way he treats his books. You become resigned to the magnificent spread of lunches he never shares with you, not that you _would_ anyway since they're undoubtedly the unpaid labor of his house-elves. Even his too-formal attire stops making you feel frumpy in comparison, immaculately (ridiculously) clothed simply another property of the Malfoy element, as is the bleachy white of his hair or the way he looms an entire head above you.

Abruptly, you're glad that he ignores you. He is _Malfoy_ after all, and you do not want to know him. In spite of your earlier boasts that anyone can choose to redirect their attention through willpower alone, stop noticing, stop perceiving, (spoiler alert) it turns out to be more difficult than you thought. Here's the main problem. You're this clever girl who appreciates puzzles and likes solving the mystery before the last page. Your friends are all so hearty and wonderful and sometimes transparent that by comparison, Malfoy is another species altogether. He thinks thoughts and feels feelings, but you don't know what they are. He is unknowable when you believe in knowing everything.

This is what you tell yourself as you begin spending your days preparing to breach his fortress.

* * *

**His Story  
**

She is too homely and full of cluttered energy to be conventionally attractive, for which you are grateful. She is already in your workplace and your thoughts; there's no more room for her under your skin.

But she won't leave you be, no matter how surly your disposition or cruel your words. She always pushes back and doesn't know how to lose a fight.

"Paperwork? You're afraid of _paperwork_?" she tells you scornfully.

"I would've put 'shrill, sanctimonious busybodies' only there wasn't enough room."

Granger grimaces. "What are you doing at an orientation for new Ministry employees anyway, Malfoy?"

"Do you ever listen to what you're saying, Granger, or are you so used to being ignored you've picked up the habit?"

"The Ministry cannot have so lost their minds as to hire you!" she insists.

"True enough. In fact, you've no one else but yourself to blame. Your reputation for rubbish lost causes is so tremendous it's apparently preceded you. Who _else_ were they going to condemn to your godforsaken Office for House-Elf Affairs?"

"Oh, please, a lost cause," she dismisses you with a flippant gesture, staring through you as she somehow always does. "Romanticize yourself much? You made crap choices, now you have to deal with the crap consequences just like everybody else."

"I was speaking of the house-elves, actually," you inform her snidely.

"No, I'm going about this all wrong. This—it's karma. You and your family are notorious house-elf abusers. Now you have to deal with the fallout. My problems are now your problems. _Karma_."

Then she whirls around and returns to the cradle of bosom pals Potter and Weasley, who have naturally been partnered for this insipid icebreaker exercise. They glare at you over her shoulder and throw possessive caveman fits. You watch as she snatches their pieces of paper, reads them and jabs at their chests indignantly.

"They told us to be honest!" you imagine her shrieking, virtuously frothing at the mouth. "How dare you cheat at this moronic bureaucratically mandated trust game?"

'Write down something you enjoy. It can be a thing or an activity. And also something you're afraid of,' the Ministry hack announced at the start of this officious ceremony, no doubt the approved-in-triplicate brainchild of some pointless subcommittee. _Then get partnered up based on your interests for fun fun fun!_ You read the paper in your palm. Somehow "Quidditch" and "paperwork" have netted you books-and-flying Granger. There was always a chance that your gambit to avoid serving probation at Hogwarts would backfire spectacularly, but even you couldn't have foreseen the Wizengamot's vindictiveness. No wand and _bloody house-elves_.

You glance up at Granger's shuffling approach, having apparently satisfied herself that there well and truly weren't any other options. "Well?" she says. "We might as well check out the real estate."

Wordlessly, you follow her to the lifts and ride down in silence. On the fourth level, the two of you step out and walk the bend in the hallway until you reached its dingy conclusion. A peeled, dusty door labeled 'Centaur Liaison Office' in fading paint greets you. _This_ is your future. The door is ajar, so Granger pushes tentatively on. Inside, a dozen filing cabinets crowd the office. Spare items of furniture are precariously stacked along the walls. It is a gratifyingly clear statement of the kind of priority the Ministry considers house-elf affairs. The slump in her shoulders further evidence that she's reached the same conclusion.

"So, flying?" you ask, because kicking someone when they're down is what you're known for. "I think you may have misspelled failure, Granger. Was failing Hooch's class that traumatizing?"

Predictably, she squares her shoulders, red staining her cheeks. "As opposed to paperwork?" she says scathingly. "Not wanting to fall off a flimsy piece of wood hundreds of feet in the air is a perfectly normal, healthy fear!"

"A broom's hardly less flimsy than a wand," you nod at hers sticking halfway out of her pocket, "but I don't see you throwing a paranoid fit over _its_ reliability."

Granger crosses her arms. "That is completely different."

"Why?" You smile at her discomfort; she isn't used to being contradicted. "Because you say so? It may come as a surprise, Granger, but not everyone considers your bullshit gospel."

"This, right here, your sparkling personality," she says, indicating the space between them, "is why it takes a mandatory seminar to make someone socialize with you."

"Oh, is that what we're doing," you say mildly. "No friendship bracelets in the offing, then?"

"I realize that pithy, juvenile insults are your bread and butter, but over here in _adulthood_," she gesticulates wildly around her, "it's possible to have a conversation without hateful nonsense. In fact, most conversations clip along quite nicely without it—take a moment to compose yourself, it's the first you've heard of it, I know."

"Adulthood," you snort. "You think there's some maturity checklist out there? Make nice with someone you loathe—pat self on back, rinse repeat? We're not in school anymore, Granger. In the real world, no one's breathing down your neck waiting to dock points. Why don't you let your hair down for once and say what you mean."

"All right, if you're so keen on it," she replies tightly. "I think it's sad that you'd rather serve out your probation with people you've screwed over than return to Hogwarts to face the music. To see for yourself what resulted from the choices you and yours have made."

Which is only one of a dozen reasons you'll never return to Hogwarts; it isn't your home; it stopped being a sanctuary after you learned the hopeless nature of never measuring up and the despair of impossible tasks. After you fell so deep in over your head, and a friend you never appreciated paid the price. As usual, she's managed to pluck out of thin air the exact words that'll make your vision bleed. Because this is bloody Granger, and she'd rather kick you in the teeth until you're both black and blue than admit defeat.

"Don't," you warn her.

"It's sad that your father's in Azkaban even if he deserves to be there," she continues, ignoring your warning, because why not, she's always ignoring you. "It's sad that your mother waited until she thought you were dead to do the right thing. It's _sad_, Malfoy. Blindly lashing out doesn't make it less so. Do you really think this little antisocial act is fooling any—"

She cuts off abruptly as you shove her as hard as you can. Flung off-balance, Granger trips backwards and collides with a filing cabinet, her jaw falling. "Don't you ever do that again!" she screeches, palming her wand and preparing to hex you.

This is where the bad idea sprouted from a seed. It is the grandfather of terrible, no-good ideas designed to violate every clause of your probation because this is Granger, who helped save the world from the likes of you, and the best mate of scarface who'd jump at the chance to rescind everything he said to keep your mother out of prison—but there it is, you didn't think; you just reacted. Watching her wand hand rising in slow motion, you snatch at it and wrench the wand from her grasp, flinging it away with all your strength. It smacks the wall somewhere in a dark, dusty corner, and you freeze, listening to it roll on the floorboards beneath ragamuffin furniture. There is a long, horrible silence as she stares at you, wide-eyed, and you know in every fiber of your being that you have just fucked up. Spectacularly.

"What the hell is wrong with you!" she shouts, shoving you as hard as you did her.

You stumble back and fall against the door, your momentum slamming it shut and cutting off the hallway light, except for a blurry patch that reaches no farther than an inch beyond the pixelated glass. In the dark, you hear someone breathing heavily; maybe her, maybe you. A palm smacks your chest, then her hand darts to the side and fumbles for the doorknob. One beat, two, on the third, her voice drifts, small and incredulous, to your ears. "It's stuck."

You push her hand away and pull as hard as you can. Nothing happens. Cursing, you kick and tug at the doorknob alternatively to no avail. It's bad enough that one impulsive action has already cratered your probation, but now you're locked in a room with Granger, in the dark, breathing dust motes. If your blood pressure weren't so high, you'd find the entire thing absurd.

"Listen, Granger," you begin.

"Are you joking right now?" she snaps. "You do not say _anything_ to me until you. Find. My. Wand."

Squinting in the general direction of where you heard it land, you hold out your hands, trying to feel your way through the maze of dumped office supplies. One tentative step, two, and just as you're beginning to find your footing, Granger lets out a yell before crashing against your shoulder. The two of you windmill frantically for a grip, your knee smashing into the wheel of a swivel-chair. Her cry of pain is followed by the sound of objects sliding.

"Shit. Granger. _Granger_!"

Groping blindly towards her, you nearly step on her because inexplicably, she's suddenly on the floor. Forget probation; knowing your luck, you've murdered her, and after Potter finds out, he'll bring the Dementors back for one last Kiss. Then he'll dump your drooling husk of a body on your mother's doorstep and give a celebratory dinner party—finally scraped off that Malfoy stain, har de har har. Then you hear a soft moan, and you promise yourself that you'll never speak to her again, no matter the provocation, if you escape this situation unscathed.

"I th-think I hit my head," she says dizzily, "on the cabinet."

The mental image of Granger lying in a pool of blood is all it takes to galvanize you. No time for subtlety or pride; if you have to crawl on your hands and knees to get that wand and escape this hellhole, you'll bloody well do it. Sliding between cabinets, you start systematically patting the floor.

"Why," asks Granger, her voice emanating from somewhere in the vicinity of the floor, "are you so horrible to people?"

"People in general or just you?" you mutter.

A pause as if she's actually considering the question, then she plods on. "Both."

Wincing as you hit your elbow on yet another chair leg, you decide that she's probably concussed. What was it they said about head injuries—keep the person awake? "I'm not horrible to people in general. Only the annoying ones. . .and the judgmental ones. And overachievers who can't let well alone. Are you getting it, Granger? Not that you're such a peach yourself. You're nowhere near as soft as you let on."

"What? This isn't about me—"

"Of course, it's about you. Or did I just imagine all that vitriol you hurled at me earlier?"

"Well—that was just self-preservation! Don't dish it if you can't take it!"

"And this is the brand new, adult Granger speaking? Didn't last long, did it?"

"Yes, well," she grumbles, "you can make even mutually assured destruction seem tempting."

The tips of your fingers brush something the proper dimensions for a wand. Triumphant, you grasp the tube shape tightly and aim at the ceiling. "_Lumos_."

It surprises you that there's barely any resistance in the wand; it thrums warmly between your fingers. Maneuvering the obstacle maze back towards Granger, your eyes meet as gratitude and a frown make war on her face. She's thankful for the light but disapproves of your handling of her wand. Best to get on with it, then. Dropping to your knees, you wave it over the bloody cut on her left temple. "_Episkey_."

The skin knits rapidly closed over the wound, the leftover smears of blood scabbing over into an angry welt, jagged and red. You press the wand into her hand before she can demand it back. Brows crinkling together, she eyes her wand like it's somehow betrayed her by working for the likes of you then slowly sways onto her feet. An impulse to help nearly has you reaching for her arm before you come to your senses and crumple the movement into an impatient gesture at the door.

"_Alohomora_," she says curtly.

The lock clicks. Slowly the door rasps open. Neither of you move for several heartbeats. "I. . .shouldn't have done that," you say finally, pushing the words through a clenched jaw.

"Yeah," she says slowly, "me either."

This is the problem with Granger, you think; it begins and ends with greediness. Not the proper, understandable kind—for money or fame—but the things you learn to hoard from a young age because you don't get many chances.

You learn with unflinching certainty from your endless, woebegone days with her that she's relentless despite her civilized veneer. How can you explain to someone like Granger that you're someone who's willing to burn the world down to protect the one person they care about? That you had, in point of fact, done just that. Maybe you'll apologize one day for the means; perhaps you'll even be forgiven; but you will never, ever be sorry for it. You're not kind or generous or concerned with the welfare of anonymous others. That's her line, and it will never be yours. Not that she cares, your intransigence not only insufficient to force her to let things lie but might actually be a goading force; you and she are never going to be friends, so isn't the logical thing to tough your time out together until you can both never look back? It makes all the sense in the world, but the concept is as anathema to Granger as water to fire.

"Well, why not?" she asks, continuing a broken thread of conversation from hours ago.

"No," you say.

"But why?" she insists.

You snap your latest assigned novel shut. "Because that's not how it works. You can't just wake up one morning and decide, oh, the sun is shining, I guess I'll stop believing these things people have taught me my whole life."

"But you can make a _start_ of it. Look, I think house-elves have been enslaved for so long that most of them truly believe that's their lot in life. And maybe that's their right—those who really feel that way, I mean. See? I would never have said that a year ago before we'd interviewed so many. It's called evolving your thinking!"

"Then evolve your way into accepting that some people aren't going to change."

"Which is total nonsense because people change all the time!" she argues.

"I think I finally get it," you mutter. "Potter and Weasley weren't born this way. _You_ happened to them until their brains fled for greener pastures. There, I don't hate them anymore. I feel sorry for them. How's that for change?"

Granger glares, pursing her lips and wheeling her chair around with a decidedly feline flounce. Somehow, you've managed to learn all her habits through sheer osmosis; you know she's pouting because she keeps biting her lip and burning a hole in your skull with big brown eyes. After about two hours, you finally cave while cursing your rapidly deteriorating resistance to her machinations.

"Fine!" you grit out. "I'll try on. . .jeans."

"Ha!" she chortles.

The Muggle trousers are surprisingly comfortable, which you plan to never indicate by so much as an eye blink. When you arrive at the office, she turns towards the door with an eager expression which quickly freezes in place. Blinking rapidly, Granger clears her throat, stares down at her hands, sneaks another glance at you, then wipes you from her vision altogether.

"Good, uh," she says in a strangled voice, "glad that's sorted."

As you walk past her, she avoids facing you but there's no hiding her flaming chipmunk cheeks. Somehow this is your life now. You're wearing a t-shirt and jeans because the girl who helped you pass Muggle Studies suddenly had a celebratory whim, and you realize that _this_ is the slippery slope. You don't know when you stumbled atop it or what gave you the first push, but you think it was probably around the time she tried to brain you with a door and you felt guilty afterwards.

As far as epiphanies go, this is the best worst feeling you've ever had, and so long as you're hanging yourself out to dry, you may as well be honest with all and sundry. You've never felt a single, solitary emotion towards Granger that wasn't extreme in one way or another; she's just not built in a way you can be indifferent to, and isn't that ironic? You spent all that time claiming perception isn't a choice all the while ruthlessly altering your senses by degrees until a world without her, one you can leave and never look back, is the last thing you want.

Granger fidgets at her desk, wrapping and unwrapping the same soggy sandwich over and over. Drumming your fingers idly, you wonder how to let her know that you see through the bullshit and you're onto her.

* * *

**Her Story (Again)**

You're trying furiously not to look at Malfoy because if you do, you're certain that he'll _know_, and since you're apparently a silly schoolgirl on the inside despite all your airs, that prospect is a terrible, horrible thing. Before you can decide if you'd rather pretend like nothing's wrong or word vomit all over his new sneakers, Malfoy walks over, picks up your lunch and tosses it in the rubbish bin.

"Well, Granger?" he says, leaning against the doorjamb. "I haven't all day."

You stare at the limp tin foil in the bin. "Just to clarify," you say, because even though you've spent months learning to speak Malfoy, suddenly you're terrified it wasn't long enough. "You're inviting me to lunch?"

He looks down at you beneath half-hooded eyes, clad in the uniform of a surly Muggle hipster, his mouth slowly curving in a way that has your heart beating a tattoo into your chest. "I'm inviting you to lunch."

* * *

_End_.


End file.
